


all loud and millennial pink

by rensshi



Series: gold [2]
Category: WayV (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Past M/F Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:01:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22764406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rensshi/pseuds/rensshi
Summary: How do people decide that they aren't cut out for romance?
Relationships: Wong Kun Hang | Hendery/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas
Series: gold [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643491
Comments: 11
Kudos: 83
Collections: WIP OLYMPICS: WINTER 2019/20





	all loud and millennial pink

**Author's Note:**

> i think i wanted to try the fwb trope in a way that is out of my comfort zone. this fic is a sort of prequel to lucas and hendery's side of the universe in [sunny side up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20978138), which u don't have to read, as this can act as a standalone.
> 
> i made a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/09g6GtgEvMfuk5H5O90DQ6?si=UihSX2NlT6WyezYgTT7AQg%20rel=) if you're into that

  
  
  
**_I. Present your problem statement_ **

You only start missing something once your perspective on it shifts, besides the stark absence it leaves. See a photo of a city with the lights swimming in the blue haze of the photo quality that Hendery spent a quarter of his life in, and the rosy childhood sentimentality that he’s probably supposed to feel doesn’t hit right away, even though he does have a vague memory of his grandma holding his hand walking him to preschool through the streets. 

But Christmas comes round to the tune of Ariana Grande and Michael Bublé _now_ and he’ll think of his grandparents back in Macau. His sister was playing Eason Chan’s album one Christmas morning back there, and she’d stopped it after Lonely Christmas came on. Hendery plucked the disc among the old Disney and action movies and old pop albums in their family collection of CDs without their sleeves, and played it in his own room. That was years ago. Christmas isn’t a big deal overall to them in their household.

And then there are people like Lucas, who grew up with the kind of Christmases where his dad would dress up as Santa Claus, the truth of it not quite killing the happiness of it all even when he found out. Or when Lucas cried at three—a fond story for the relatives to coo over—when he wanted to go out to see the Christmas lights in Hong Kong and his mom didn’t let him off the bus in case he ran off with his little denim overalls disappearing out of sight.

There’s something uncomfortable about knowing all of that, after the nodding along, the big wide toothpaste ad smiling to Lucas’ mom retelling the story. You grow into these things; the smile sticks, like honeycomb bits in your teeth from cake that’s too rich. It softens after.

At least, it’s supposed to. Otherwise how the hell are you going to swallow it down?

Instead, Hendery is now sticking the back of his tongue against his teeth, his jaw set in the February cold and composing a long _fuck off_ message in his head to Lucas ringing Hendery’s phone. His train of thought cuts off when he bumps into other people in the streets, the heart-shaped balloon slapping him in the face as one of them chirps a _sorry_. Fuck Valentine’s Day too. 

He sits on the curb outside a corner store three streets away from the dorm to the campus—he realizes he’s gone far enough that the library’s side if he’s taking this route—will come into view if he rounds the bend up ahead. The incessant vibrating of his phone has stopped. It is painfully silent all of a sudden. The mull of people out and cars rolling past dial down to an eerie volume. The Twix bar he’s bought with some spare change tastes like it’s got a fresh side of sour shame to go with the sweetness because for one, he left his wallet at Lucas’ dorm room when he’d walked out, and two—he has to admit it. That it takes two to play the game, dance, tango or whatever. 

Hendery balls up the wrapper in his fist and tucks it away into his pocket. It’s way too damn cold outside. His mouth feels raw, heavy with the aftertaste of the chocolate.

Somehow, that’s indicative too of back when he’d gone out for a food run with Lucas in the morning, their hands stuffed in pockets and the sky blurred with the rosebud pink that Hendery really likes, the pinpricks of night lamps splintering out and disappearing as it got lighter; he regretted not having his camera on him and stopped to take a photo on his phone. Lucas backed away and out of the frame to let him. The night before that morning, when Hendery thumbed the lipstick stains blotched along Lucas’ jaw and covered them with his own mouth, until Lucas kissed him back. 

Now that’s gone full circle, and it really sucks.

  
  
**_II. Nosedive into flood lines_ **

About three months ago, Hendery swears he’s got his priorities in order. 

He’s managed to keep up a good GPA down to his last year in college, even with the gaping holes in his attendance record in the last semester. He gets discounted ice cream and parfait and what else have you from the dessert shop popular with couples and Instagram influencers he used to work at because his former boss still loves him. Somehow he’s managed to get his hunter to level 70 in Monster Hunter World, a nice round number, before he’d dropped the game for his thesis, which he just has to push through a little more to finish. His mental breakdown count is only at two so far. 

So what Hendery wants is straightforward. After spring graduation, he wants to keep himself busy during the summer after and secure an internship if not a job right away. Generally, he wants to be here for a long time— _always_ a good time—and he wants to also be able to pay for his parents’ flights to Macau where they can spend the holidays away somewhere they could really call home.

Three months ago doesn’t seem very long considering the circumstances.

Case in point:

“I think this is just fine,” Lucas says, eyebrows creased and staring intensely in a standoff at what’s cooking in the pan in front of him. He stirs the chicken in the sauce slowly, as if this ginger and sesame one-pot dish is a complex layered thing and any hurried movement might ruin the balance it’s achieved. Even when the whole of Yangyang and Xiaojun’s flat smells like it used to whenever Kun made food for them. Hendery would have dialled Kun on Skype for him to witness and backseat cook all of this, if Kun wasn’t on the opposite side of the Earth in another timezone. 

“Great. Now, move over,” Xiaojun huffs, bumping Lucas out of the way. He’s starving—after a whole day of writing papers, and the loud clanging of bowls makes Hendery flinch even when he’s sat all the way on the couch.

Yangyang has finished running his hand under cold tap water where he’d burned himself. He sinks down next to Hendery, a faraway look in his eyes.

“It wasn’t a date,” Yangyang flat out says when Hendery opens his mouth to ask what happened to going out again today.

“Stoner’s Pizza and boba after? Sounds pretty date-y to me. Are you going out with him again?” 

“No. Jaemin is a shitty matchmaker if he was trying to play one, but at least Jeno Lee is a friend now.”

“Maybe you should date people who are leaps away, in like, a separate web altogether. Have you considered the journalism majors?” Hendery suggests, already laughing a little at the idea.

Yangyang shakes his head. “The universe is one big silver mother web of webs. Also, what do you know about compartmentalizing?” 

The web being this—Jaemin Na from Hendery’s elective had set Yangyang up with Jeno Lee. Jaemin is also trying his best to sleep with Renjun Huang, who is Hendery’s flatmate. Renjun runs the same circles being part of the campus’ radio hosts for different segments with Yuqi Song who used to date Lucas. 

About Yuqi Song; she dumped Lucas just before the semester started. Stopped really being interested enough to keep him around, even though her not wanting to go long-distance after graduation when she’ll leave for Beijing was the supposed final nail in the coffin. 

Sometimes you just need to finally throw up after too many shots and overpriced highballers for a fix. Lucas had spent the last couple of months picking himself back up—he drowns himself in his readings, burns through extra work helping out the at the health center at uni, and breaks himself out of his fifth social media lockdown like a washing machine cycle. 

Hendery, on the other hand, said he wouldn’t mind being open for a distraction from the crippling pressure of the future.

Which is how it turned into this badly clichéd thing: At a party, in some bar-turned-club was when Hendery’s gaze latched onto Lucas’ neck, the lipstick there from a girl he’d been dancing with earlier still smudged like a smarting bruise on the taut skin of his neck, touched blue and warm under the light. They were both tipsy yeah, but Lucas had been happy and it had been nice to see; giddy laughter and bright eyes. Freaking tactile towards Hendery to the point of handsy. 

He’d had enough apprehension to ask Hendery if he actually wanted to help him get off, Hendery having just realized he’d been rolling his ass back against Lucas’ dick through their clothes in the bathroom. Hendery helped indulge him because it was all too convenient. He indulged him because he needed it just as much. In Hendery’s one-track lizard brain at the time, pressing his mouth roughly against Lucas’ when he’s got Hendery crowded against the sink made sense. He’ll recall how Lucas had nipped on his bottom lip and Hendery tasted the sweet acidity of the fruity Mentos Lucas was chewing on earlier. That felt more disorienting somehow than Lucas coming down Hendery’s throat.

He’d thought disorienting was Julia Choi, from Intro to Sociology in sophomore year—had Hendery groaning between her thighs clamped down around the sides of his face when she so kindly taught him how to eat her out, her pearlescent blue nails scraping his scalp. The monumental leap had been Ten Lee, a senior he’d met through mutual friends again, and made Hendery realize that he wasn’t as straight as he would have liked to believe. The sheets in the guest room that Ten kissed him in at a party, reeked with overpowering fabric conditioner that Hendery buried his face into, the sounds he made muffled while Ten murmured, “Could have been fucking you all year if I hadn’t waited until you weren’t a freshman,” mouth hot on Hendery’s neck as he’d jacked Hendery off to a wrenching orgasm.

“Seriously? That happened?” Lucas has to ask. He’s open-mouthed like a fish out of water, and has been for the majority of the morning after he and Hendery had messed around at the bar last night.

“And?” Hendery forgets sometimes that he and Lucas hadn’t been friends until some loud blurry Halloween party last year that Yangyang invited Hendery to. 

“I thought you had a thing for Ten.”

“What the hell,” Hendery complains. Lucas isn’t wrong. Besides, Ten had given him something to jerk off to for months in sophomore year. “I’m gonna hurl. Whose loud mouth did you hear that from?”

“Kun’s,” Lucas mutters, covering his smirk with his hand.

Hendery shifts and unfolds his legs, his ankles stiff on the hardwood floor of his room and decides right there, not to let it go since they’re on the subject. “Also—hypothetically _what?_ ”

“Hypothetically, would you want to fuck?” comes Lucas’ question. Again. He’d stumbled around asking the first time, that Hendery wasn’t even sure he’d heard it right.

Hendery turns beside him to face Lucas properly to stare. Lucas fixes him a curious, nervous look but he doesn’t seem like he’s on the edge of his flight or fight responses, legs still sprawled out comfortably on the floor. “Hypothetically, yeah,” Hendery answers, quiet enough that he thinks Lucas doesn’t catch it. 

But the shift in Lucas’ expression is there. There’s a telling shade of red dark up Lucas’ neck that reminds Hendery of how he’d looked watching Hendery lick the cum off his own lips last night. The way Lucas lets out an embarrassed small laugh now, isn’t enough to hide the clear interest, and honestly, the interest is all they really need to keep it going.

  
  


  
**_III. Don't bite (or kiss) the hand that feeds_ **

“You’re visiting his family? For Christmas?” Xiaojun asks, without preamble when they’re in the middle of the kitchenware section in the Costco across town.

Hendery almost knocks over an item, swears over a display shelf of mugs that look like they’ve been puked on by Santa’s elves. A disgruntled mother on the other side steers her seven-year-old daughter away from them. “You say that like it’s an ominous thing. What do you know about his family?” Hendery asks.

“Nothing you and I don’t.” Xiaojun shrugs. “It’s just that Christmas is bonding time. I think you guys bond enough.” He joins his palms together, levels them with his chin and closes his eyes. “Please know that every night, before I go to sleep, I pray to God that Yangyang never has to experience what I have,” he says solemnly and Hendery cuffs him by the neck where Xiaojun is ticklish.

Hendery can hardly blame Xiaojun for being the unfortunate one, hangover-free, to walk in on a poorly-timed handjob in the kitchen at their place. He and Lucas had underestimated how little Xiaojun drank the night before, in comparison to Yangyang who had slept soundly throughout the ordeal of yelling when they’d been caught—the yelling mostly on Xiaojun’s part. How they made Xiaojun keep mum about it, Hendery doesn’t even remember.

“Well congrats, God loves you now,” Hendery deadpans. “So what are you trying to say?”

“Well,” Xiaojun says slowly, looking down at his sneakers as he thinks. “I for one, wouldn’t want to invite my fuck buddy to stay over at home for the break.”

“Ah, but see, you wouldn’t fool around with one of your friends,” Hendery says, wagging a finger at him.

Xiaojun clicks his tongue. “You know me so well. Anyway, it’s nice that Lucas thought of having us over, even if I can’t go. He didn’t want us to feel _alone_ for the break.” Xiaojun air quotes the word, walking backwards out the entrance after the door slides open and blast them into the chill of the air outside. Xiaojun already has his flight to China booked, since he sure as hell isn’t going to spend the break here when he’s got hardly any family to visit.

“Alone for the break, huh?” Hendery echoes to Lucas later on at the end of the day, street lamps on underneath the plum sky. “A guy finds out someone’s favorite Christmas song is a sad one and he just can’t let it go. Eason Chan is a legend to me.” Hendery flashes Lucas a grin.

“But it’ll be fun,” Lucas eggs on, shaking Hendery's shoulder. Hendery sidesteps a huge crack in the pavement and bumps into Lucas’ side. Lucas tries to steer him in a frogmarch down the street until Hendery pries him off. “This is to make up for how you won’t be able to come with us on the road trip. And Yangyang will be there!”

Lucas and Yangyang have known each other since childhood, so Hendery thinks that’s a given. Other than that, he’s reminded Hendery about his own vacation in Beijing. It’s sealed on a discounted roundtrip from Macau that his family had booked recently even though the dates were set so far off to be in the following summer after graduation, beating the plan for a cheesy Californian road trip.

“Movie marathon again? Well, I won’t be hearing it _this_ time,” Renjun says when they step through the front door, reaching for his brand new noise-canceling headphones. They don’t plan to watch movies, or plan much else for that matter; they’d gotten past the first thirty minutes of Ant-man and the Wasp last week before Hendery sucked Lucas off and Renjun placed the order for the headphones. 

“So what do you say?” Lucas asks, lying on his stomach, bare feet hanging off the foot of the bed a moment later.

Hendery scoots towards him closer for warmth. He plays with the hem of Lucas’ shirt, says the first thing that’s on his mind, even if he’s already got an answer. “I got a half-baked sermon from Xiaojun,” Hendery tells him. “Something about how he wouldn’t invite someone he messes around with to meet his family’s near Christmas.” 

Lucas lets out a huff of laughter, surprised. “Why not? So now doing all this with you changes things like that? I mean, I guess it does,” he says when Hendery purses his lips in silence. “But dude. It’s for Christmas.” 

“Yeah well, Xiaojun also said he wouldn’t fuck his friends.” Hendery closes his eyes, the weight of the week and sleep deprivation of finals finally crashing down on him and he’s still reminded of all the shit due next night. 

“Maybe you should rest. I’ll wake you up later,” Lucas suggests, splays his hand over Hendery’s stomach and up his chest, shirt pulled up so he can kiss the soft skin over his stomach. “Do you wanna squeeze one in?” He asks, when he reaches Hendery’s crotch. 

“I got time,” Hendery mutters after a split second’s thought, letting his head fall back onto the bed, fingers curling at the back of Lucas’ neck. He tugs on Lucas’ hair when Lucas smirks at him, pops open the button of Hendery’s jeans. 

“Oh fuck,” Hendery whimpers at Lucas licking the head of his cock. He’s got his jeans and underwear pulled down past his knees and his cock pushes straight past Lucas’ lips, pink and shiny. Gasps when Lucas hums around his cock. Lucas works himself down to the base and up again, the sound of it sloppy, wet and eager. Hendery nips at the pad of his thumb to keep himself from making too much noise, asks Lucas to go faster.

“You said you had time,” Lucas murmurs when he pulls off of him, tone smug. 

“I did,” Hendery breathes, before biting down on the knuckle of his thumb.

“You sure it isn’t oral fixation, bro?” Lucas asks, looking up at Hendery.

Hendery lowers down his hand, licks his lips, and closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see Lucas’ face and soft smile. “Shut up.”

“I like your fingers. They’re tiny,” Lucas comments.

“You’ve got giant spider hands, dude.”

Lucas makes a soft noise, knowing Hendery likes said giant hands anyway. Lucas wraps a hand around nearly the whole length of his cock now, palm hot. “Your hands are pretty,” Lucas emphasizes. “I like the way they are. I like your mouth. And how you can’t just stop talking with it sometimes.”

Hendery feels the spike of hot breath, the flat of teeth on his inner thigh when Lucas smiles into the skin there as he jacks Hendery off lazily, palm moving over the head in circles just to drag it out. Hendery just _really_ wants to come now. He lets out a weak laugh. “Are you done waxing poetry? Because your mouth is way too close to my— _ah_.” 

Lucas does that thing where he tongues the underside and swallows. Hendery goes back to scrabbling his fingers in Lucas’ hair. He lets out a moan, loud enough to fill in the quiet spaces of the late afternoon hum. Renjun’s ears under his noise-canceling headphones outside will be just fine. 

  
  
  
**_IV. A moment is a very small particle of time._**

During the winter break, Hendery’s parents are busy working, the Eason Chan CD returned to its rightful place with whatever holiday tunes are there tinkling on the new radio next to the old CD player. But the days just before New Year’s will be spent with Jack the poodle on Hendery’s heels in the hopes of more food. He can’t exactly hang around his older sister and her childhood sweetheart of a boyfriend while they ran errands all the time. 

Hendery didn’t know what to expect in a suburban neighborhood lined with creamy pale houses and tall trees around the bends, Lucas’ family’s house being distinguishable from the jungle of wild plants and vines growing near the small porch. The only Christmas-y thing visible is the tiny humble tree in the corner of the living room, with the dull tinsel angels and glittering ornaments hanging off it, star lopsided at the top that still manages to look charming. Lucas’ parents serve them a hefty heap of roast duck, claypot rice, and cinnamon rolls from the Cinnabon in town after. Yangyang eats like he’s done so a million times before, and he kind of has, sitting cross-legged in his chair while Lucas’ mother asks how Yangyang’s father is doing in Taiwan. 

They track shoe prints across the sand in the playground during the day when Lucas and Yangyang decide to take Hendery on a tour around the suburbs, even though there’s nothing to see.

Hendery recognizes the rubber duck yellow slides from one of the pictures in Lucas’ living room of a scrawny kid with a buzzcut at the top of it, his arms around his five-year-old brother then. There’s a picture of him at six, riding a bike—probably the same one that Lucas had told Hendery he’d lost control trying to take shortcuts through greenery between the neighborhood when Hendery found the scar over his knee.

There is the stretch of dark uneven green in the empty soccer field nearby and suddenly it feels like he knows too much. Hendery captures it anyway on his camera, the one with the new lens he’d gotten from extra cash saved up.

He flops back against the grass beside Hendery when they come home to his backyard. The grass will stick to the backs of their knees while the cold breeze bites at their ankles. Dead leaves crunch clean under Yangyang’s shoes as he plays with the family labrador.

“You really liked running,” Hendery says it like a question, nudging Lucas' leg with his shoe. _Yukhei used to be on the track team in high school, did you know?_ Lucas’ mom had appeared out of nowhere next to Hendery who’d been leaning forward on the edge of the armchair to look at another picture, beside two shiny plagues.

“Yep. If you can't beat the time, there’s always the finish line _,_ ” Lucas says, shrugging. In one lap around the oval track, time is condensed into the milliseconds between the heart pounding and breathing. It’s the feeling of invincibility that comes with the wind rushing in your ears and the beating of your soles against the ground, gravity pulling when the momentum wavers with the speed. “My grades for physics were pretty bad until I understood it that way,” Lucas says, grinning up at him. “Do you think we’d still hang out if we knew each other then?”

If they’d gone to the same school, Hendery would have been taking the pictures of their meet to publish in the school magazine. Maybe he would have even considered joining the debate team too, just to spout nonsense during practice.

“I think we would have,” Hendery says. When Lucas smiles at Hendery’s answer, so bright and wide it shows his shallow dimples, something sticks in Hendery’s throat, cloying and sweet. It's like peeling off the Power Ranger stickers that you slapped on the wall anyway as a kid despite your mom’s warning and tried to take it off, tongue between your teeth in the hopes that it wouldn’t ruin the wallpaper underneath. You strip away something down to the point where you have to relearn it and know all the parts of someone you never did before and sometimes, that’s the part where the discomfort really fucking claws at you. But you can’t stop peeling away the layer, that Pink Ranger sticker that was your favorite because you needed to know how the wallpaper would turn out.

That’s how Hendery feels when he sees Lucas talking to his parents who call him Yukhei, hearing him switch between Cantonese and English to them, his little brother making snide harmless comments at the way Lucas sets the table.

Hendery can now picture this vividly: a sixteen-year-old kid in a picture frame back in the house behind them, squinting in a half-hearted smile against the summer sunshine with the rest of the track team, the dirty white trainers catching the light instead of the medal around his neck. Hendery can now compare the boy then to now, how he’s stopped really changing at the end of high school, his shoulders already filling out his high school graduation toga then like he does his jackets now and the teenage baby fat already lost.

They camp out in Lucas’ old bedroom at night; Hendery and Yangyang take up the floor on a wide enough mattress with Lucas’ old Finding Nemo blankets and a comforter cocooned around them until Yangyang knees Hendery in the tailbone above his ass in his sleep, while Hendery stays awake, staring at the wall next to him. Because now, Hendery can conjure up a visual in his mind of him having sex in Lucas’ childhood bedroom; Lucas’ hand clamped over Hendery’s mouth to keep the hitched noises down after everyone’s gone to sleep, Donald Chow and his lit cigarette plastered on the wall towering over the scene among the faded action movie posters and well, shit. Xiaojun was seriously on to something about fucking close friends and inviting them over to their family’s.

 _I told you so, have fun jerking one out there on your own_ , Xiaojun texts back after a laughing sticker. Hendery immediately regrets his decision to download WeChat again for this. 

  
  
**_V. Happy New Year, losers_ **

When Yuqi asks to see Lucas after the winter break ends, it’s preempted by her telling him she misses him on Christmas Eve. Not the kind of _I miss you_ that’s culled from drunk texts or calls, but sober. Impressively steadfast and apologetic. As if her wanting to leave for Beijing right after graduation isn’t as much of a hurdle anymore as she’d thought.

“She must have done a lot of thinking over the break,” Hendery mutters, endlessly clicking his pen in place of copying from the sheet of borrowed notes propped up on his knees. He keeps clicking anxiously, a leftover result from turning in what he’s done for his thesis to his professor for feedback, and also from trying to read through the scrawl of Jaemin's notes on the floor of his room. Turns out an iPad is useless on Jaemin when it comes to _easy_ and _efficiently digitizing_ his written notes.

Hendery is wondering if this is worth the exchange for him giving Jaemin precious information about Renjun, when Lucas reaches over from behind him on the bed to take the pen. The clicking stops.

“I think she’s actually serious about this,” Lucas says, twirling the ballpen. He traces the shell of Hendery’s ear with it until it tickles. Hendery swats it away.

He doesn’t have to glance back at Lucas to know he’s conflicted. “If she wants to get back together, would you?” He asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe three months ago, I would have said yes,” Lucas admits, sinking down on the floor next to him and flattening the hair on his own head sticking up from static. He goes back to folding the receipt from the food he’d brought in a paper bag, into tiny squares, his brows furrowed. He keeps bringing flatbreads over from the nearest Starbucks. Hendery has involuntarily gotten semi-accustomed to actually having breakfast now.

“Do you miss her?” Hendery presses. Frankly, some part of him doesn’t give a shit. Some selfish part of him wants to tell Lucas not to either. Besides, Hendery knows the answer when he sees the look on Lucas’ face.

“Yeah sure, I do. But it doesn’t mean I want to get back together,” Lucas replies, frustrated. He presses his face into Hendery’s shoulder. If he feels Hendery stiffen a little, he doesn’t say anything or pull away.

A month prior to the breakup, before Yuqi’s birthday, Lucas had the gift picked out, only to fish out the receipt and replace the special note inside with it, in case Yuqi wanted to return it to the store after the breakup. Hendery saw later on, bumping into her and her friends near the Subway, that she’d kept it, the gorgeous pink of her dangly earrings and pretty silver studs of it shining against her hair. If Lucas had brought over Yuqi to meet his parents for Christmas, Donald Chow on Lucas’ bedroom wall back there would have been facing them fooling around like teenagers, hushed whispers and sweet laughter.

This is how it’ll play out: Lucas will see her wearing them under the winter sunshine and he’s going to go back on those words. She’ll throw in a friendly joke here and there because that’s just how Yuqi is, and maybe he’ll say he realizes that he’s never fallen out of love because he’s always been soft like that, and takes everything a little too seriously. 

“You might be right. That could happen,” Yangyang agrees later on, sticking his hand into his second packet of prawn crackers, the one he’d asked Xiaojun to bring over from China.

“You don’t know that,” Xiaojun retorts. He gives Hendery a careful look, and strangely, that’s what tips an iron weight into Hendery’s stomach to settle in among the crackers he’d also been eating out of stress.

“This is Xuxi we’re talking about. He’ll hurt his head _thinking_ about wanting to give it another shot. Bet,” Yangyang says loudly over Hendery tearfully coughing over a cracker.

Yangyang should have known how anti-climatic life is because they don’t get back together. 

“Whether or not she gets that internship in Beijing doesn’t really matter. And she will,” Lucas adds. “I’d feel worse, like I’d still hold her back. It’s not like it doesn’t feel bad anymore. Like—I don’t know.” He shakes his head.

Inside this fast food joint, the streets outside look eerie. Lucas chews his food, looking morose. The place smells like meat grilling and plastic booths. Their fingertips absorb more heat from the fries than the actual burgers.

“You told her you missed her too, didn’t you?” Hendery asks over pouring ketchup in a huge dollop on his plate. Lucas reaches over to dip a fry in, gives him a look. “You’re predictable,” Hendery offers.

“Well,” Lucas mutters miserably before he stuffs the rest of his burger in his mouth.

“It was the truth,” Hendery says, around a fry.

“That’s the thing, though. There’s not much to go on anymore. I don’t think it was _love._ ” Lucas says the word like he’s still testing the weight of it in his mouth, like it’s an oddity unsettled. 

“People get lonely,” Hendery says plainly, looking down at the ketchup smeared.

Lucas drops his gaze and lowers his cup, mouth pursing. “Yeah,” he says, looking out the window next to them. The light falls over his profile the way a lovelorn character should look in a movie. “I think I’m just angry at time lost,” Lucas murmurs.

The clawing discomfort comes back. There’s a pop rock song playing past the counter up ahead that seems to get louder. The bass and drum lines tick like a timer. 

“You’ll stop missing things that make you sad, or angry. Promise,” Hendery says, after a drawn out silence.

Lucas hums, downing the soda and screwing his eyes shut as he crunches the ice in his mouth. Whether it’s in agreement or not, Hendery can’t tell. He nudges Lucas with his foot underneath the table. Somehow that gets him to look up and his mouth curls upwards, dimples appearing.

On their way back, they pick up a beer each, just one, at Hendery’s suggestion. He doesn’t tell Lucas he’s been itching for one as well.

They sit in a corner next to the old soft serve store about to close for the night, the faulty pink signage that reads Soft Top dusting the white tips of their trainers (really, the store’s called Soft Stop, but Yangyang thought Soft Top was so much better). The cars slow down in the intersection up ahead of them, stop lights winking. On the exact opposite street amongst the greenery is where Lucas had vomited once, drunk, Xiaojun pulling him in the correct direction. They’d gotten Chinese food right after. They laugh about it now.

“You’ve been keeping on the down low,” Hendery brings up, hugging himself against the freezing night air. “You should come out with us again.”

Lucas keeps his eyes on the ground, the heel of his Nikes scraping concrete. “I just wanted time to uh, think.”

“Alone?”

“Sure.”

Hendery glances at him sideways, feels his mouth pull into a smile. “Right. And you came out here with me.”

Lucas presses tiny dents into his beer can and just echoes, “People get lonely. It’s just easy with you,” to which Hendery snorts at. He goes on with, “I’m not just talking about getting each other off and how it’s really—” 

“Convenient? Yeah,” Hendery says. He sets his empty can down on the ground, leans one foot on it. “It really is, huh?”

“Smug,” Lucas laughs, looking away. The way he looks now seems like a dream, tinted soft orange. There’s fondness Lucas can’t hide in his voice. Hendery finds himself grinning back.

“Like you aren’t half the time. It doesn’t bother me, if you’re worried,” Hendery adds when he catches Lucas’ expression. “I like the distraction.”

Lucas nods, not mentioning graduation a couple of months away. 

They get back to Lucas’ dorm room, eager to get away from the cold. Hendery trips over his roommate’s shoes—stoops down to haphazardly put Mark’s slides back into place—for what feels like the fiftieth time when he walks in. Lucas pulls out a new toothbrush from an open 5-pack that Mark seems to get too many of and it’s when Hendery’s brushing his teeth alongside a few other strangers in the communal bathroom and showers, that something’s struck a nerve in him, and has done so ever since the winter break. It’s the proverbial scratched wallpaper revealed after the stickers and adhesive tapes on walls. Hendery being hyper aware of Lucas’ body warmth next to him as he fishes out clothes for Hendery from his closet is like wondering about the wallpaper and its house history past the surface.

The light from Lucas’ phone bounces off the ceiling with a rewatch of the latest season of Stranger Things, and Hendery’s eyes grow heavy. His eyes flutter open again when Lucas kisses him on his temple and on his cheek, practically snuggles into him. 

“You want something?” Hendery mutters.

“Nope, nothing,” Lucas says into his hair, snaking an arm around his waist and Hendery lets him, closes his eyes again. He’s glad for the beer; a can doesn’t hit but it’s just enough for their limbs to settle—fuzzy, warm and ultimately exhausted for some reason. 

The heaviness is lodged in his system even when the morning comes in a haze of pale sunlight peeking out in a slit from the heavy curtains.

And then it isn’t, his feet angled out awkwardly from under the blankets, his toes unbearably stiff.

Lucas jerks away, grumbles into the pillow, “Mm, cold,” when Hendery’s feet touch his.

“Does Mark mind when other people sleep on his bed?” Hendery croaks a moment later when he realizes Mark’s bed is still empty. But it’s warm enough with Lucas’ arm looped around his waist and he can’t complain. Lucas’ fingers draw a gentle line over his waistband where his shirt has ridden up. The heat follows almost immediately.

No surprises, they would have been doing this last night if the air hadn’t been weird, things unsaid pushed aside and strewn out like the random pieces of clothing carelessly pushed to the floor, so it didn’t feel like the right time.

But now Lucas breathes into his neck, nose tickling Hendery’s skin, and the jolt of heat that goes through Hendery when he rolls onto his stomach and presses his own erection into the mattress makes him clamp his mouth shut, breathe deep through his nose.

Lucas’ hand starts roaming down Hendery’s waist. His fingers play the soft skin along the waistband of Hendery’s boxers and up his chest again where he’s slipped it under the shirt that he’s lent Hendery. With the soft worn in fabric that chafes Hendery’s skin just enough to feel good, his brain still muddled with the lazy sweet hush of the morning, it gets him so horny. Makes him push back against Lucas, his dick hard against his ass, again and again until Hendery breathes out a small eager noise from his mouth.

“Shit,” Lucas whispers into his hair. He kisses Hendery behind his ear, nips at his earlobe gently. “Mark’s over at his boyfriend’s. He told me,” Lucas adds flatly when Hendery twists his neck round to look at him questioningly.

“Great. Then could you—ah,” Hendery gasps when Lucas palms him over his sweatpants, and suddenly it’s hot, the solid sweltering weight pressed behind him. He keeps pushing back against Lucas grinding slow. And finally pulls his own waistband and underwear down, knocking Lucas’ hand out of the way with the intent to get Lucas to touch his bare cock.

But Lucas retracts his hand and utters a strained, “God,” nudging Hendery to get him on his back to face Lucas. He knows he must be leaking pre-come at the tip like nothing else. He feels it when Lucas helps tug off his underwear all the way and his own hand goes down to fist his own cock loosely on instinct, thumb smearing over the wetness. Lucas reaches down to Hendery’s wrist, hesitates.

“How do you want it?” Lucas asks, licking his lips, his hair sticking up all over the place. Hendery grins; he’s not going to think too hard about options. He threads his fingers through Lucas’ hair, feels the leftover wax shit product Lucas sometimes uses. But Hendery still pulls him in for a quick kiss. 

He’s already gasping, on his elbows and knees when Lucas pushes tentatively, warmed lube spread around his rim before Lucas works his middle finger in. Hendery muffles the soft noises from his mouth into the pillow. He breathes slow and relaxes, anchors himself to the feeling, until he’s rolling his ass back on Lucas’ finger.

“Is that enough?”

“Jesus, I—no,” Hendery huffs when he hears the amusement in Lucas’ voice. Honest to god—one finger _is_ enough. But he’s not having that right now. “Want another. Please,” he tacks on, and Lucas complies.

Lucas fucks him with two fingers at a steady pace, shallow on purpose—none of the funny virgin nervousness Lucas had over touching a guy there like that the first time. The stretch makes Hendery’s heart pound in his ears in anticipation nonetheless, cock throbbing and making him whimper at every slight graze against the sheets below him.

By the time Lucas slips them out slowly, Hendery feels like he’s going to combust. Lucas shucks off his own pants and Hendery pulls his own shirt over his head. He’s learned that he likes Lucas’ tendency to get his mouth on him when he fucks, likes the feeling of being completely stripped bare when Lucas still has some of his clothes on. Lucas had smiled, called him a slut for it before.

Honestly, now when Hendery climbs onto Lucas’ lap after Lucas rips open a condom packet he takes—not steal, as he so firmly put it seeing as how Mark used to keep leeching off his supply anyway at one point—from Mark’s drawer, Hendery’s knees spread as he sinks down, head thrown back and mouth open in a soundless gasp from how good the stretch feels, he doesn’t care.

“Fuck,” Lucas gets out, guiding Hendery by the waist. “Look at you, you’re”—

Hendery's hands scrabble up to Lucas’ shoulders as he moves in a grind. “What?”

“Good,” Lucas just breathes, and Hendery would have probably laughed except he’s too into this to think about it. Lucas slips lower against the headboard and pillows to dig his heels into the bed and thrust upwards. He’s got a vice-like hold on Hendery, hands spread out on his hips to help him get the rhythm—and then Hendery’s fucking himself on him, riding Lucas like he can’t get enough. Whimpers at the slight change in the angle, feels his own cock ache when Lucas gasps.

Hendery doesn’t remember wanting it this badly before, so much that the want makes him feel stupid with it. But maybe it’s something else too, like the way he needs this maybe. And how Lucas looks at Hendery at times when they’re catching their breaths, bodies slightly moist with sweat after, as if the sex is one of Lucas’ favorite things in the whole world.

“Lucas,” Hendery starts to pant. “Lucas, more—” He falters as he slows, the ache going to his legs instead and he doesn’t realize he’s saying _please_ until Lucas tries to sit up. Hendery slips off of him, the tiredness starting to come down in waves.

“You’re a mess,” Lucas murmurs, brushing the bangs away from Hendery’s forehead.

He moves in between Hendery’s legs as Hendery flops back on the bed. Hendery loops his arms around Lucas’ neck. He likes this too; the sturdy weight covering him and how wide Lucas’ shoulders are compared to his. Lucas kisses Hendery on his lips, cheek, wet along the side of his face. His moan rumbles against the pulse in Hendery’s neck; the sounds reverberate everywhere as he slides in again. The throb of Lucas’ cock inside makes Hendery hum when he licks Lucas’ thumb. He gets his mouth on two of Lucas’ fingers and sucks, his own spit smearing his chin. 

Hendery’s cheeks are burning with the way Lucas pulls away slightly to look at him, completely taken. When Lucas presses down slightly on his tongue, it makes Hendery’s skin thrum, mind almost gone with how weak he feels, mouth opening wider for Lucas to swipe his thumb over his bottom lip and his wet chin. He lets go of Lucas’ fingers and Lucas is free to grab onto one of his hips, his other hand fisted in the sheets, and fuck into Hendery harder. His shirt chafes Hendery’s dick with friction in between them that isn’t enough and he’s digging marks into Lucas’ upper arm, feels the flex of the muscle there.

Lucas comes first, groaning into his neck. Hendery feels the pulse of his orgasm as Lucas slows down to a complete stop, keeps his lips pressed against Lucas' jaw in a kiss the whole time until Lucas pulls away, panting.

His fingers are inside Hendery again with even more lube, lazy and slow this time and wet almost up to the knuckle. Hendery thinks he could come like this; Lucas’ lips are terribly red, eyes misty and looking at Hendery like he hung the moon or something. He feels Lucas’ tongue on the tip of his cock and _god,_ Hendery has to fist his hand from the sheets to Lucas’ hair. Lucas sucks at the head, mouth pushing down to the base, painfully slow and up again, and it’s a torturous repeat with the gentle pushing at his prostate. It seems to last forever until it suddenly doesn’t.

Hendery comes hard in Lucas’ mouth, his own moan sounding far away and detached, as his orgasm hits.

  
  


  
  
**_VI. So in dreams, there are hardly ever collisions_ **

When Lucas asked about anybody Hendery dated, he mentioned a girl in high school, not by name because he didn’t think he needed to bring it up:

She turned sixteen a week before his own birthday when Hendery got to know her. She’d been in World History and a science class with him. When she broke up with him, he should have known when she said she wanted to skip out on the senior prom. She’d kissed him first, on a friend’s couch one summer.

There was a certain obligation he’d felt then, to kiss her back. Her mouth was sticky with lip gloss she actually didn’t really like using. He supposed he should have told her how nice it looked on her. Like he probably should have told her she looked pretty when he was supposed to undress her for the first time but she’d curled in on herself in the end like she didn’t want to be touched under her clothes, even if she’d been the type to talk openly about the porn the guys in their year all passed to each other. And that was fine. They’d gone to the senior prom separately with their own bunch of friends, stag, and Hendery remembers feeling strangely relieved she showed up, considering that when she said she wanted to skip she meant that just didn’t want to go with him anymore.

It hadn’t felt like obligation the moment Hendery had spiraled into this with Lucas.

“It’s either you stop or you tell him that you like the sex a little too much,” Xiaojun tells him. “Have you seen the way the both of you look? Yangyang suspects something.”

“What do you mean?” Hendery says, unclamping the plastic lid of his drink because he’d refused a straw.

“He thinks there’s something going on between you two. He doesn’t suspect sex, but there’s something. With the sick heart eyes Lucas has whenever he laughs at something you say, I’m gonna have to agree,” Xiaojun says, closing his laptop to look at Hendery across their table. “This isn’t going anywhere unless you admit it.”

Hendery’s ears are hot before he even has to ask because he knows what Xiaojun means. But he’ll play dumb to give himself the benefit of the doubt. “Admit what,” he says.

“You have _feelings,_ ” Xiaojun pronounces like he’s talking to a six-year-old. 

Hendery crunches the ice between his molars, his jaw tight, unable to find the words.

“You aren’t even denying it,” Xiaojun notes, looking over Hendery in concern.

Hendery runs his hands through his hair. “I’m not,” he admits, and there’s a new mild wave of horror hearing himself say it. “Shit. I’m going to tell him we have to stop.”

“Or”—Xiaojun interjects. “Or you can stop and tell him how you feel?”

“He just got out of a relationship,” Hendery says weakly, flinching at Xiaojun’s sharp cackle.

“Ah, and that’s partly how you both started hooking up,” Xiaojun finishes, sympathetically reaching over to pat Hendery’s arm.

Thus, Hendery times it in correlation to how long it takes to get him to snap. No strategy at all, except he purposefully waits until after Lucas’ birthday celebration at the end of January; Lucas had kissed him on the cheek as a thank you for his gift, then briefly on the mouth right outside Xiaojun and Yangyang’s place after they left. It took all of Hendery’s self-control, his system still a little fuzzy with alcohol then, not to drag Lucas back to his own place. 

He’s supposed to be proofreading a paper due for the gazillionth time, in Lucas’ room. It’s a torturous wait that makes him stiffen when he feels Lucas press closer next to him in his exhaustion, glasses still on and askew from lying down on the bed. His mouth latches over the pulse in Hendery’s wrist, and Hendery finally blurts out, “I think we should stop this some time. Or soon.”

“What?” Lucas’ eyes are still closed, dark circles more prominent than ever.

“This _thing,_ ” Hendery mutters, as quietly as possible because Mark Lee is right there in the corner of the room at his side of the desk, earphones plugged in his ears and connected to nothing, clacking away at his laptop in extreme concentration. If this was casual all along, then it only made sense to bring this up as casually as possible. “The sex,” Hendery hisses when Lucas still blinks at him, bleary-eyed.

Lucas’ eyes widen in an _oh._ He lets go of Hendery’s wrist, his other hand notably moving from Hendery’s hip to the bed. “Okay. But why?”

“Because,” Hendery says, licking his lips. “Because we’re graduating soon. I don’t know if we should be keeping this up until”—he stops right there, seeing the small frown on Lucas’ face, the tiny push of his mouth that’s his thinking face. They never intended to, or expected to keep it up until now, much less after graduation. 

“There’s that saying where assumptions and expectations is what kills a relationship,” Renjun offers later on when Hendery has to let it out and tell him why he looks so down after coming back home when Renjun notices.

“We’re not,” Hendery whines, face down on his bed.

“Relationship is an umbrella term here between two people so it still stands,” Renjun shoots back.

And Lucas’ response earlier? Completely anticlimactic as expected.

“Yeah. Yeah okay. You’re right,” Lucas murmured softly, pulling back to glance at Hendery, and absolutely oblivious to the tiny implosion in Hendery’s chest that tugged downward between his lungs.

It’s only now at night, when Hendery is lying in bed wide awake and playing it over and over that he recognizes the feeling. It’s rib-crushing disappointment.

  
  
  
**_VII. Romance is boring_ **

Two weeks after they stop is how long it actually takes for things to really come full circle, a day before Valentine’s Day, which is a huge irony in itself.

Truth be told, Hendery’s been avoiding Lucas, and it hasn’t been so difficult. He mutes all his chats on Facebook and Telegram, including their group chat with Yangyang and Xiaojun and occasionally checks in so he won’t be too much of an ass. He turns down Lucas’ invite that one time for Chinese food, truth being that he’s up to his neck with work. He buries himself with it until he finds he can’t when he’s finally done with his dissertation, the accompanying photos that he took he never wants to see again along with the design covers he’s made and printed. 

The timing is impeccable: The next day, Hendery skids to a stop along his route on campus, the rap song still blaring from his earphones when someone taps him on the shoulder. He turns around and adjusts his baseball cap to look at whoever it is.

“Hi,” Lucas says, standing there and already pocketing his phone, which means business. “I—you’ve been busy,” he says, the most obvious thing in the world but Hendery clings onto it in relief, his mind still blanked out. 

“Yeah. I’m done now. I sent in my thesis a few days ago so I’m kinda free?” Hendery tells him, yanking out his earphones and suddenly wishing he could take that back right away.

Because that is exactly how he finds himself in Lucas’ dorm room again—still the same mess of clean laundry he always puts off folding away out of sight. Hendery’s emptied out his pockets, phone, the tangle of wires that are his earplugs, and his wallet by his side to sit as comfortably as he can on the edge of Mark’s bed. He watches Lucas divide folded clothes and stack them away into the closet. It feels so oddly domestic, Hendery feels kind of sick.

“I’ll just come right out and say it,” Lucas says, looking Hendery in the eye. “You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to. Or if you do, you don’t have to be weird about it. We’re friends.”

Hendery breathes out. “Yeah, we are,” he echoes, frowning slightly at how this doesn’t seem to satisfy Lucas at all, who cards his hands through his hair hands and sighs. “I’m okay with being here.” 

“I don’t want us to suddenly start acting differently,” Lucas tells him.

“Were you really worried about that?” Hendery asks, not expecting the hurt that shows on Lucas’ face, that wounded puppy look that makes him look both endearing and ridiculous.

“Yeah. Yeah I am. Look—I’m sorry, I started really thinking about what happens after, and I know I shouldn’t overthink,” Lucas rambles, sitting on his own bed opposite Hendery and it’s like watching a train run its tracks that are still being built as he goes off, hands gesturing. “I started to worry what would happen to us and I didn’t want it to be awkward, and thought it was when you kind of vanished but it’s only just been two weeks”—he punctures his words with a hollow laugh—”So I _know_ I’m overthinking”—

“Sorry,” Hendery interjects, chest tight. “I’ve been distracted. Genuinely distracted,” he says firmly when Lucas opens his mouth. “But I worry about it too, and honestly I don’t—I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it.”

“Tell me about it,” Lucas says, laughing nervously. “Before I really start to miss hanging out with you. And I’m not talking about the sex, we’re done with that.”

The smile that pulls at Hendery’s mouth feels cheap, thin. “Well that’s just the problem then,” Hendery murmurs. 

“What are you talking about?”

“I liked the sex because it was just sex. And then I started liking it because it was you. That’s my problem,” Hendery says, his fingertips thrumming with something that feels a lot like bitterness, and this is looking less pretty and ideal of a confession with every millisecond that passes as Lucas stares at him, brows knitted in confusion. “I liked fucking you, a lot more than I should.”

“You asked for it to stop,” Lucas says slowly.

“And I never asked for feelings to come out of this,” Hendery admits quietly.

There’s a heavy pause. His chest feels kind of shot when Lucas finally says, “I didn’t think I’d have them too.”

“You what?”

“I started liking the sex a little too much for it to be anything just casual. And I’ve _tried_ casual before. I’m finding out I am really not very good at it,” Lucas admits, dropping his gaze. 

Hendery suddenly feels the urge to bring the fist he’s curled on his knee to Lucas’ solar plexus. He entertains the thought for a split second but looks away from the earnest expression Lucas wears, and of course, it suits him. Lucas always was the wear-his-heart-on-his-sleeve type, the kind of person to hang it out ripe for the taking until he’s strung dry.

“And you wanted this with me? How on earth did you not think this was going to backfire?” Hendery says incredulously.

“Backfire? Dude, I like you too,” Lucas shoots back, clearly stricken. “I like you—as in, I still want to kiss you even when you look like a downright mess in the mornings with nasty coffee breath and zero sleep.”

It’s supposed to feel good, but the disbelief seeps in before Hendery can think through the surprise, makes him sputter in laughter. “Yeah right. You just got out of a relationship. Come on, you said you were lonely."

Lucas bristles as he leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Yeah, like everyone else in the world who gets lonely, but I’m not stupid enough to not recognize how I feel.”

“I just don’t think we should,” Hendery still warns him. 

“Because?”

Hendery’s breathing quivers. “Because sometimes you do this thing, where you prefer to only see the bigger picture where it suits you. Like you keep thinking you know what you’re doing even when you don’t,” Hendery pauses, a funny awful prickling behind his ears. “You go on having this picture in your head that people you like will love you back the way you want to if you love them hard enough and it is a trainwreck to watch. It’s selfish.”

The tightness has set in Lucas’ eyes, a hard glint there as he searches Hendery’s face. Outside, the sun is setting, yellow light spilling over the floors and throwing shadows over Lucas’ outline and planes of his face in a way that swells and aches with the silence. 

Lucas’ voice is low, shaky when he finally speaks, like he’s forcing himself to say it. Hendery's seen him ticked off but not like this. Seeing someone angry in the heat of the moment, but towards yourself, displaces another small block of knowledge about them, tears through the wallpaper of what's familiar to reveal something else. “And what about you? You can’t tell me that you haven’t been selfish as well. You’re afraid,” he says, a quiet desperate edge there, almost mocking. “You just can’t seem to handle when you start wanting something before you even try to understand it. Even when it’s right there in front of you, you think you’re better off without it.”

“Are you done?” Hendery asks, fully aware that he’s being an ass but he can’t stop for some reason.

“Grow up,” Lucas bites back, but he flinches ever so slightly at the way Hendery stands up, abrupt. 

It would have been funny, except Hendery’s dimly aware of the resentment vibrating through his teeth. He grabs whatever of his things he can take, stuffs them back in his pocket without a second thought and mutters, “I should go.”

He’s not hearing anything anymore when Lucas starts to protest _wait, I didn’t mean to, shit Hendery wait_ and he’s out the door in seconds, bumping straight into Mark Lee when he reaches the staircase, who grins up at him way too brightly.

“Oh ‘sup, do you have plans with Lucas tomorrow for Valentine—okay, good talk!” Mark calls after him when Hendery pushes past him and bolts for it down the stairs.

  
**_VIII. Wake up now! And now! And now!_ **

It takes Hendery about 30 minutes of aimlessly walking around to get to the spot near the intersection with Soft Stop (signage finally fixed), and a freshly spilled raspberry slushie that nearly misses him to make him sigh. His body slackens from the tension release under his windbreaker jacket as the night passes, like a beating drum that stills in rhythm. 

He knows he’s going to have to go back to Lucas’ dorm soon. But he’s still turning his words over and over in his head as he stares at the 7 missed calls from Lucas. He doesn’t realize until he moves his hands, that he’s clammed up again, and it isn’t all from the cold. He’s reminded suddenly, in a strange moment of clarity, of being five years old and how warm home had been in comparison. His grandma held his hand no matter clammy they got in the weather. In another time zone, she should be getting up by now to make longjing tea.

On a lonely curb with a perfect view of the intersection and traffic, he comes to face the fact that it does paralyze him. And that maybe what paralyzes him in fear doesn’t even matter anymore because things have gone the complete opposite of what he’s wanted, and any effort to avoid a certain outcome can end up futile. 

Because at the end of the day, it’s the expectations that Hendery runs away from, afraid of things he can’t grasp for very long even if people ask him to hold on to them. Even if they’re intangible despite it taking on the form of rolled up crumpled paper bags that used to contain heated flatbreads for breakfast, wake up calls mid-afternoon, and cold wind freezing his bare ankles in the backyard of a house with a tiny lopsided Christmas tree, that he wants to get to know more. 

Hendery takes out his phone, and starts typing out iterations of an apology:

_Hey, I’m sorry about what I said. You were right about everything, but I still don’t think_

_I’m really sorry, you’re right. I am scared. I just really hate being scared about you of all things,_ which he deletes again and tries a third time.

_You were right. I get it if you’re still pissed off and will be for a while tho I do need my wallet and earphones back. I was a jerk. I was afraid of ruining something, and that’s pretty pathetic compared to trying. I think I’m afraid of that, of someone trying so hard, us trying and we’ll both wake up and realize that oh of course this isn’t the movies or comics or anime and all that jazz where love and romance is measured in things heroic or grand. Real life is scary enough and you’re like the realest thing I’ve felt. I just wished we did things the right way. I’m sorry._

Hendery’s thumb hovers over the send icon. But instead he presses the back button, exits his messages and locks his phone. 

He starts walking back, picking up the pace until it turns into a jog, his trainers hitting the concrete in time with his heart beating fast. The night is still early, and somewhere on the other side of the Earth, it’s a new day.

Lucas is sitting outside the steps of his dorm, shoulders hunched in a jacket with his hoodie pulled over and looking utterly miserable. He startles when he realizes the freak running straight towards him and slowing down is Hendery.

“I’m sorry,” Hendery says, breathless and tugging off his baseball cap. He crumples the back of the cap in his hand, Lucas looking him over with shiny eyes and a strangely puffy red nose. “I’m really really _really_ sorry for what I said.”

“I—it’s fine,” Lucas sputters, clearing his throat as he stands up. He takes a step towards him. “What you said was uh, valid. I’m sorry too,” he says. 

“Could we talk about things?”

Lucas nibbles his bottom lip, and responds with “Yeah, okay.” He hesitates. “How are you feeling?”

Hendery pushes down his sleeves, and decides to be honest. “Pretty tired," he answers.

Lucas looks at him then, with a certain warmth, a softened _yeah, you and me both._ And he's right; they're both tired. Hendery's breathing has gone back to normal. Maybe the world needs to slow down, because you can't start over if you don't stop.

"I could use a friend, first and foremost,” Hendery tells him. 

Lucas looks down, tries to hide the small smile on his face at that, but it breaks into an easy gentle grin as he hands back Hendery his wallet.

“Okay,” he replies. "Yeah, always."

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> where i got a few of the section titles from:
> 
> 1\. Pink + White, a song by Frank Ocean  
> 2\. Romance Is Boring, a song by Los Campesinos!  
> 3\. A Tale For The Time Being, a novel by Ruth Ozeki
> 
> other than a few quotes of which i used for my section titles, the other titles are mine.
> 
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/fractalkiss)


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